SOCCER:IT MAY not quite have emulated 2002 when three Irish players made the Premier League team of the year but Sunday's haul of a similar number in te PFA's Championship team is a respectable enough achievement.
What is particularly striking about it, though, is that none of those named can get a look in these days with Giovanni Trapattoni’s Republic of Ireland.
The Italian’s assistant, Marco Tardelli, as it happens, was asked only last week about the ongoing policy of excluding Paddy Kenny and Ian Harte from the Ireland squad and, having damned each with faint praise, the Italian suggested that both were unfortunate victims of the management team’s determination to build for the future.
The recognition of Kenny by his fellow professionals, though, tends to support a widely held view outside of the Irish camp that he merits inclusion in the squad, particularly at a time when Shay Given is injured and neither of those providing cover for Keiren Westwood against the Macedonians had ever been capped at senior international level.
Kenny has certainly had his ups and downs over the past few years and the couple of caps he earned for Ireland can scarcely be regarded as amongst the high points given that he conceded nine goals between the games against The Netherlands and Cyprus back in 2006. There has always been a sense, though, that he has been made to carry the can for wider failings in what appeared to be a fairly chaotic camp at the time.
Certainly his form this year has been impressive with the 32-year-old last night keeping a club record 24th clean sheet in the league for QPR who he has helped to the brink of the Championship title.
Like Kenny, Harte has expressed a desire to return to the international fold if the opportunity arises but there seems little prospect of it in the wake of Tardelli’s polite dismissal of him towards the end of a campaign in which he has scored 12 goals and won lavish praise from his manager Brian McDermott and team-mates at Reading.
His performances for the club have served to highlight how much of his career was effectively wasted after his time at Leeds. The left back showed a good deal of character to take on the challenge of heading to Spain where he played for Levante but fell out of favour at the club for quite some time before leaving and then putting in unproductive spells at Sunderland and Blackpool prior to rebuilding his reputation at Carlisle United.
His team-mate Shane Long might well feel a little aggrieved not to have made the team as well given that he has scored 21 goals for Reading this season, remains in contention to end the campaign as the division’s top scorer and has contributed hugely to his side’s late charge for promotion.
The striker may, however, have suffered from the fact that polling for the awards takes place many weeks in advance and Long’s form has built steadily since he started scoring regularly around last October.
Instead it is former Shelbourne winger Wes Hoolahan, now an attacking central midfielder at Norwich, who is the third Irishman in the team.
The 28-year-old has been in sparkling form at Carrow Road this year with only Graham Holt, who made the team ahead of Long, topping his tally of 10 goals for the club.
He has actually twice made the League One team of the year playing out wide but his current role is the sort that Trapattoni reckons he would like someone to be able to play with James McCarthy having apparently failed his recent audition there in the game against Uruguay.
Hoolahan, however, last kicked a ball in the colours of his country when he came on in the dying moments of the friendly against Colombia in London almost three years ago.
Trapattoni’s most recent squad included 11 players whose current clubs are not competing in their various league’s top flights. Despite his peers clearly rating him highly, though, the Dubliner didn’t get a look in.
